I am the wife of a technical co-founder and I wish he would quit this venture. It’s not because I don’t believe in him–I absolutely believe in him. It’s that I despise his soul-sucking, cowardly, lazy partner more than words can tell.

Ah, that’s what it is. She’s a woman. There lies your problem.

Trust me, women who lead companies want nothing but respect and a positive working relationship with their male cofounders.

As a single woman cofounder with a male married partner, I’m very fortunate to not have this friction. However, I worked with males in the past that were single and they had too much sexual interest in me and would watch my lips move but not actually listen or think about the words coming out of my mouth. I just thought they might have just been weird or something. It wasn’t until they realized that there was going to be no fraternization that they quit or I was forced to fire them.

My male married cofounder has been a godsend. We focus on the product and solving problems everytime we meet and he’s never looking at me like he’s Dopey.

I’ve heard from male cofounders who work with women that they have problems with having two female bosses, the wife at home and the woman at work. They don’t know how to view the dynamic accurately so they villianize one to survive. Your husband may be doing this…. Or you may be doing this?

If I were you, I would ask him if he wants to quit. If he says yes, then tell him you’re in full support and will help him make an action plan. If he says no, then you know he may just be peeved about working for a woman and then coming home to a woman that’s “bossing him” around too. ? in that case, you should tell him to seek a therapist to help him work out his issues with work to make things easier. Explain that you want to listen, but you think talking it out with a neutral third party will provide new insights and that because you are on his side, you’re just bound to not make things better because you have his back and would TP her house in a heartbeat with him.

Good luck, but truly… Stay out of it when you can’t be neutral. There’s often no such things as villains and heroes in startups. Just people who are passionate ready to win and others who are not.